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Eating Disorders

I was flipping through the book trying to decide what to write about for this blog entry and stumbled upon eating disorders. So, I went online and typed in eating disorders. As I was scrolling down the page an interesting article appeared. It was an article written by Britt Farwick in the psychology department at Vanderbilt University. This article was about whether or not there is a correlation between people with eating disorders and obsessive compulsive disorder. If you even just think about the characteristics of both of these disorders you can come to some sort of conclusion that most eating disorders and OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) have a strong correlation. Through out the article Farwick found very strong evidence to help support her claim.

But, what I found most interesting in the article is that there was another point addressed. It was that since these diseases have such a strong correlation and have very similar characteristics, they could and/or should be classified under a " "family" of disorders called obsessive compulsive spectrum disorder" as stated by the article.

In my opinion these should only be classified under one overarching condition if it has been shown that the said person has been diagnosed with an eating disorder, such as anorexia, bulimia, etc. AND has been diagnosed with OCD. As for treatment regarding this "obsessive compulsive spectrum disorder" condition, medical professionals are trying to create one drug that patients would have to take. There have been several tests with a drug called fluoxetine but it hasn't shown effective yet.

In summary, this break through would be very helpful in cutting down the amount of medications people with both of these diseases have to take. But, as with many psychological claims, further tests need to be done.